RMS Titanic was an Olympic-class passenger liner owned by the White Star Line and built at the Harland and Wolff shipyard. At the time of her launching in 1912, she was the largest passenger steamship. During her maiden voyage, Titanic struck an iceberg on April 14, 1912, and sank two hours and forty minutes later on April 15, 1912.
The sinking resulted in the deaths of more than 1,500 people, ranking it as one of the worst peacetime maritime disasters in history and, by far, the most famous. The Titanic used some of the most advanced technology available at the time and was popularly believed to be “unsinkable”. When the ship sank it was a great shock to many people that despite the advanced technology and experienced crew, the Titanic still sank with a great loss of life. The media frenzy about Titanic‘s famous victims, the legends about what happened on board the ship, the resulting changes to maritime law, and the discovery of the wreck in 1985 by a team led by Robert Ballard have made Titanic persistently famous in the years since.
